Archive
Rushing to Universal Coverage
Last year, before Rush Limbaugh pledged to emigrate to the jewel of Central America, I lived and worked In Costa Rica for six months.
What If We’re Not So Angry?
aIt seems the more conservative you are, the more aggressive you want America to be with our nukes. If we’re angry loose cannons with an itchy finger on the button, the thinking seems to go, rogue countries will think long and hard about crossing us.
School Resegregation
Limbaugh Loves Universal Health Coverage
For Rush, the health-care fight was personal. In January, suffering with chest pains, the yackety-yacker was rushed to a hospital in Hawaii. After his recovery, he used the experience to embellish his rhetorical assault on reformers: “Based on what happened here to me,” he bellowed, “I don’t think there’s one thing wrong with the American health care system. It is working just fine, just dandy.” Well gosh, Rush–that’s because Hawaii has had a form of Obamacare since 1974, including a statewide mandate that employers provide health coverage for full-time workers. Why shouldn’t all Americans get what you got?
Eternal U.S.-Cuba Tensions Leave Families Weary
Regardless of which side you come down on, at least for now, we seem destined to continue the 50-plus year dance of mutual animosity between the two countries. The U.S. trade embargo will continue. The war of words won’t abate.
Obama’s Inauguration Didn’t End American Racism
It’s not that American racism ever went away. If things seemed to pick up for minorities during the artificial boom years, it had little to do with public intention. If African Americans had an easier time buying a house, it was more because the market was overbuilt than because of any greater tolerance. If mortgages were easily available, it was more due to the need for new swindle victims than to bankers experiencing a sudden vision of racial harmony.
Nuclear Weapons: A Dangerous Relic
While diplomatic and political relations with Russia may have warmed since the Soviet Union’s demise, the process of reducing nuclear weapons has proven to be more complicated and slower. So much slower, in fact, that at present, the U.S. and Russian arsenals still make up 95 percent of the world’s 23,000 nuclear weapon stockpiles. Those 23,000 nuclear weapons could destroy the entire planet many times over.
Church’s Sex Abuse Scandal Reflects Deep Flaw
The sexual abuse scandal that began in Boston eight years ago, involving the Church hierarchy’s widespread refusal to protect youngsters from child-molesting priests, spread inexorably around the world–Canada, Brazil, Australia, Ireland, Germany–until it finally reached the heart of the Mother Church, the Vatican, where it now rests at the feet of the Pope himself, Benedict XVI.
Monopolies Are Killing Our Farms
After two decades standing idly by while agribusiness companies and seed behemoth Monsanto swallowed their competitors, a new Department of Justice anti-trust team is vowing to bust up companies that have gotten so big they’re thwarting competition. And a new sheriff is taking the issue to the people.
Seismic Inequality
Regardless of why Haiti fared so much worse than Chile, we should help Haiti not just recover but prosper. If a nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members, as Gandhi famously said, then the international community, too, must be assessed by the same yardstick.
